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My Annual Tradition: Home Projects!

Monday, November 22, 2010

If you recall last year at this time, I had just painted my kitchen, dining room, and living room. I get bored with colors from time to time and paint is a really affordable way to make a dramatic change.

It's that time of year again--Tom knows the look in my eye. I sit on the sofa sipping my coffee and start looking around the room. Then my eyes meet the walls and stare intently. I envision different colors. He knows when he sees that look that he'll soon be going with me to Home Depot.

I love color. When we moved into this house in 2004, everything was off white. The kitchen walls, the dining room, living room, bedrooms. The downstairs bathroom was a dark rose, but that's another story. So I painted immediately....and I grew tired of some of those colors. The kitchen has been a colonial blue, a chocolate brown, sage green, and until Saturday it was cream with robin's egg blue cabinets.

I do not ever plan to change the robin's egg blue cabinets I painted, but the cream was way too boring for my tastes. I painted it Glidden Frosted Green Grape. It looks like a soft and icy mint. With the robin's egg blue cabinets and all of my vintage pink, blue and green accents, it is perfect for this space. The trim is a crisp white. We also had these 50's laminate countertops when we moved here. Getting granite is something on our to do list, but we have other projects we'd like to do first. Last fall, I told you about Rust Oleum Counter Top Paint. I decided to try it and was really happy with the result. The only thing is that I thought the brown was too light. Saturday I bought another can and chose Earth, the deepest brown. I love the deep brown with my robin's egg blue.

Cabinets are Valspar Lyndhurst Duchess Blue

My door knobs are from eBay! You can buy these really heavy dark oil rubbed bronze knobs for about $2 each at Classic Door Hardware.

This is quite possibly the best $20 you can spend!

Original counters with the first countertop paint...going on. It came out too light so this weekend I chose the color below:

The countertops need to "cure" for 3 days, so as soon as I can put stuff back on and have my kitchen looking pretty, I'll post pictures for you!

Green walls, before painting

Day 2 of decorating was the living room. We have a long and narrow dining room. There's lots of wall space and it is definitely my least favorite room to paint. No question about it. As much as I liked the green on the chart, it never felt right to me on the walls. I opted for a rich shade called Fawn by Martha Stewart:

Martha Stewart Fawn

Even though I primed over the green, this still came out a couple shades darker than the swatch. It is warm and rich like a gingersnap almost. I really like it. It makes the room feel much cozier. I painted this room for almost 9 hours. Tom won't paint, so he watched football while I painted :)

I have to paint the trim (white) and hang pictures and this room will be done.

Next stop will be to do the hallway going up the stairs. This will be the muted green from the kitchen. I just love pale blues and greens next to browns, so I know this will work!

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